Wander_Land - a-n The Artists Information Company

Venue: Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens
Starts: Saturday, July 1, 2023
Ends: Saturday, August 5, 2023
Address: Nr. Gulval, Penzance, TR20 8YL
Location: South West England
Organiser: Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens and Gallery

Inspired by a pilgrimage route that passes through Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Wander_Land explores our relationship between landscape and wandering.

The exhibition is a next step, something of a sequel to the 2022 Chichester Cathedral exhibition, Together We Rise, in which Royal Society of Sculptors members reflected on their experience of, and response to, COVID lockdowns.

Wandering, in a conscious sense, suggests links with asceticism, joy, protest, well-being, environmental awareness and harmony.

In addition, and probably most closely associated with the location of Wander_Land, is the act of pilgrimage; St Michael’s Way, one of the Camino routes which leads to Santiago de Compostella in Northwest Spain, passes through Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.

The responses, by the artists, to the theme of this exhibition are varied and intriguing. There is humour, ambiguity, beauty, environmental critique, and playfulness. Wander_Land features work in a wide range of media and sizes, placed outside, and in three gallery spaces, on floor, wall and ceiling.

The work is selected by the artists themselves. Penzance-based art writer Martin Holman is advising throughout.

1st July – 5th August, daily 11am – 4pm

PV 30th June, 6-8pm

Artist talks, 1st July 2.30 – 4 pm

Closing event: 5th August am & pm

Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Nr. Gulval, Penzance, TR20 8YL

Free. Ticket required for wider woodland/gardens

Artists involved

Tabatha Andrews, Pauline Antram, Barbara Beyer, Michael Blow, Ann-Margreth Bohl, Philip Booth, Ros Burgin, Doug Burton, Fiona Campbell, Dallas Collins, Chris Dunseath, Emma Elliott/Susie Olczak, Jane Fox, Anna Gillespie, Simon Hitchens, Jane Jobling, Alistair Lambert, William Lasdun, Ian Marlow, Robert Marshall, Seamus Moran, Rebecca Newnham, Kate Parsons, Suzanne Blank Redstone, Mark Richards, Jilly Sutton, and David Worthington

Artists are members of The Royal Society of Sculptors, which is based in London and has over 700 members worldwide. The group exhibiting here came together during the pandemic, via Zoom, and is based largely in the South West UK.

Website: https://www.tremenheere.co.uk/exhibition/royal-society-of-sculptors-wander_land/

Instagram: @wanderland2023

Fiona Campbell

Fiona is a visual artist, educator and curator, passionate about art and nature. Brought up in Kenya, she is now based in Somerset, UK. Fiona creates mixed media artworks, often blurring boundaries between sculpture, drawing and installation, sometimes as large scale assemblages. Approached as drawings in space, line extends into 3d form. Fiona also works in film, and dips into performance. She works within the community, collaborating and curating art projects involving social engagement - often in unexpected places for art. At the root of her practice is the notion of interconnectedness throughout nature, line as energy, life’s cyclical persistence and transformation. Increasingly, environmental concerns about human exploitation of nature and over-consumption inform the content, taking her work into the realm of artivism. Fiona is interested in tentacularity - linear life forms repeated micro to macro. She sees these rhizomic connections as metaphors for life, vitalism and regeneration. 'Tentacularity is about life lived along lines ... a series of interlaced trails’ (Donna Haraway). Materiality and process are central: Fiona's work is labour-intensive and her use of found objects, discarded and recycled materials relates to waste, our relationship with matter, nature, and ourselves. Collecting materials is an intrinsic part of the process. Throughout, there is an underlying theme of sustainability. Fiona gained an MFA from Bath Spa University in 2018 and a BA from Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 1987. Alongside her own practice, she teaches art and brought up her son. In 2019, she won a Royal Society of Sculptors Gilbert Bayes Award culminating in RSS GBA Winners exhibition, London & becoming a Member of RSS. She was selected for Ingruttati Palermo workshop and exhibition, part of Manifesta12, Italy, where she made a performative piece Gift of Water. Residency solos include Offenders, Cells, Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge, '19; Found, Now Missing, Voyages at Contains Art, Watchet '14; and she was highly commended for her Green Capital Residency, Big Green Week, culminating in exhibitions at Create Centre and Arnolfini, Bristol, '12. Fiona was awarded Arts Council funding for her ambitious project ‘step in stone‘, involving site-specific artscapes in Mendip quarries with 14 international artists, in 2015. She curated and featured in the multidisciplinary event, which linked culture, environment and the community. She also co-curated and featured in ACE-funded B-Wing, Shepton Mallet Prison, a site-responsive project with 8 artists/writers and community events. She is currently working on an artist-led travelling project around South West UK - Inch by IN:CH, 2021. Commissions include a 4m hand woven canopy as a focal piece for Sarah Eberle’s Viking Cruises Mekong Garden, Chelsea Flower Show, 2016, which won gold and best artisan garden. Other awards include Round Lemon, ONE exhibition, first prize '21; Red Line Art Works Award, '20; Environmental Award, Devon Recycled Sculpture Trail ’14, Atkinson Gallery Summer Show, first prize ’11, and David Shepherd Foundation 3-d Wildlife Artist of the Year, ’09. A film about Fiona's work was commissioned by Art UK, in partnership with Culture Street & Royal Society of Sculptors in 2021. Fiona was Rep for Somerset Art Works, served on the Board of Trustees at Black Swan Arts, and is now on the BSA Programming Committee. www.fionacampbellart.co.uk